


Why Nanny Ashtoreth Always Wears Gloves

by ModernWizard



Series: The Demon's Daughter [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Clothing, Genderfluid Crowley, Gloves, Goth - Freeform, Multi, Other, POV Warlock Dowling, Trans Warlock, Trans Warlock Dowling, fashion - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-07-27 10:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20044309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernWizard/pseuds/ModernWizard
Summary: [In which Heck is 20, with a significant flashback to when she's 5.] Heck the witch [formerly known as Warlock] is now living with her Hellmom Crowley and her Angeldad Aziraphale. So why does Nanny always wear gloves? she wonders. Aziraphale, Crowley, Anathema and Newt, and even Madame Tracy have their theories. So does the person who wears all the stuff...NOTE: Chapter 3 refers to transphobia and homophobia, as well as harassment and insulting terms, though they are not explicitly mentioned. The chapter also refers to dysphoria.





	1. Balancing the Genderfluids

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, there's a significant number of us who find Nanny Ashtoreth hot. There has got to be a way to celebrate the character -- her clothing, her style, her personality, her power, and her hotness -- without objectifying her and/or reducing her to stereotypes. Forthwith, my attempt.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nanny's here! Heck missed her soooooo much. Discussion of Crowley, Nanny, Mala, and genderfluids in general. Will they be rebalancing soon? Everyone sure hopes so.

“Nanny! Hi!” Heck stampeded into Nanny and Aziraphale’s bedroom. 

“Please don’t — “ Nanny, sitting on the bed against the headboard with her legs stretched out, didn’t even glance up from her book. She was long and tall and strong, and the only straight things about her were the lines of her narrow face and body. She wore all black — high-collared blazer, blouse, knee-length pencil skirt, fine leather gloves — and round black sunglasses over her eyes. Her shoulder-length red hair formed ripples that never dissolved, no matter her level of exertion.

“Wheee!” Heck launched herself at Nanny’s lap.

Nanny clicked her fingers at Heck, pausing her flight in midair. “Behave yourself, child!” she snapped in her best Mary Poppins imitation. “This is a bedroom, not an acrobatics show in a traveling circus.”

“I’ve seen Aziraphale dive-bomb you,” Heck, trapped a third of a meter above the bed, pointed out. She wiggled and strained for something to pull herself down with, but Nanny didn’t seem inclined to release her at the moment.

“Aziraphale is an angel who can control his velocity, his impact force, and even his mass, in ways that you can’t.” Nanny met Heck’s eye with a smirk. “He also never lands on my bladder.”

“Okay, point taken. I won’t cannonball at you anymore.”

“Thank you.” Nanny turned her attention back to her book.

“Uh, can you let me down, please?”

“No. Remove the lint from the ceiling fan while you’re up there.” Nanny magicked a dust rag into Heck’s hand.

Heck threw the rag at Nanny’s head, just as Nanny snapped again, allowing Heck a slow descent. She landed with the merest of jounces at Nanny’s side on the bed. “Um, can I hug you?” Heck asked. “I promise I’ll avoid your bladder.”

“Of course you can hug me, child!” Though she played at being stern and condescending, Nanny was the furthest thing from. Heck was twenty, yet Nanny addressed her as _ child _ and _ hellspawn. _The words never seemed wrong or mean when they came from Nanny, though; they felt like other equal names. “It’s not the hugs I object to; it’s your violent crash landing on my organs.” Nanny opened her arms.

“Okay, sorry. I won’t do it again.” Heck hugged Nanny from the side. Despite being a nominally cold-blooded snake, Nanny was also a demon who, as Heck imagined, was made of shadows with a core of burning light. Her wiry body was very warm, almost hot, as the brightness within her emanated through her pale skin. 

Nanny pulled Heck against her with the tight, muscular insistence of a constricting snake. She had never been soft, especially with the overbust corset she always wore beneath her clothes. In fact, she was unyielding, and the stays from the corset pressed against Heck’s rib cage. Heck didn’t care. “I missed you so much,” she said, squishing against her Hellmom.

“You tend to say that right before you interrogate me about something, I’ve noticed.”

“Well, yeah, but I really did miss you.” Heck drew away from Nanny. “I know, with the way your genderfluids work, that you’re Crowley more than half the time, but...well...you’re the one I know best.”

Heck’s Hellmom had three main forms/genders: Crowley the dude, Nanny the lady, and Mala the snake. Since Nanny had been Heck’s governess for the first nine years of her life, Heck was most attached to her. “I’m the one you _ love _best,” Nanny corrected, tapping Heck on the tip of her nose with a gloved finger.

“Well, yeah, but that sounds offensive, like I don’t like Crowley and Mala.”

“You don’t have to love all of me, child, as much as you love your Nanny. I only want you to respect and accept all of me.”

“Oh, I do! I do! And I love Crowley, and I love Mala — “

“But let’s be honest,” Nanny cut in, holding up her hand. “Your ranking of my current genderfluids has me first, Crowley second, and Mala third. And I understand that. Everyone who knows about my genderfluids — or Crowley and Nanny at least — has their preferences. Madame Tracy obviously prefers me as I currently am. Anathema and Newt prefer Crowley. Even Aziraphale is more partial to my humanoid forms over my non-humanoid one. You all have preferences, and that’s perfectly fine.”

“Do...um… Do _ you _have preferences?” Heck ventured. “Is that why Crowley’s around more than half the time? Because you like him best?”

Nanny shook her head. “No, that’s not it at all. To tell you the truth, I think I’m still recovering from nine years as your Nanny without any significant breaks. I assume that Crowley predominates in part because he was held back for so long. However, since I’ve had about nine or ten years of this particular distribution of genders, things should change soon.”

“More you — I mean Nanny?” Heck gasped. “Oh, I hope so; I hope so; I hope so!” she cheered. 

“I, in fact, share your sentiment.” Nanny slid down the pillows so that she was lying fully on her back. “I’ve been feeling rather imbalanced in general for the past nine years, and I’d really like a more even distribution of genderfluids altogether. I know I have conscious control, but I’ve found that it’s best to just let the cycle cycle. In a way, my genderfluids are similar to a heartbeat. With enough practice and effort, once can consciously regulate one’s pulse, but why bother?” She shrugged. “In most cases, its involuntary changes are perfectly fine. Besides, going with my natural homeostasis takes less effort, and I’m all about exerting the least amount of effort possible.”


	2. Everyone Else's Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone in Nanny's circle has a theory about her style. Crowley's, of course, contains Doctor Who references. This chapter features details on the surprising uses to which Aziraphale puts his bow tie and Heck trying really hard not to be interested in my favorite DW character.

“So...then…”

“Ah!” said Nanny with a laugh. “Here comes the interrogation.”

“It’s just one question. Why do you always wear gloves?” Heck stretched out on the bed next to her, but on her front, chin in hands, swinging her legs in the air, ready for a story.

Nanny chuckled. “Do you really think I’m going to answer that without asking you what I always do?”

“You mean — have I exhausted all other possible sources? In fact, I have. Aziraphale said, ‘Weaponry,’ and then went back to his book.” 

“Weaponry! He’s one to talk. Ask him how many people he’s killed with that bow tie of his.”

“Aziraphale?” squeaked Heck. “Kills people? Multiple people? With his bow tie? Who? What? When? Why? How?”

“After we averted the Apocalypse, child, we left our respective head offices for good. That doesn’t keep representatives on either side from attempting to...forcibly recruit us, shall we say? Aziraphale has always been a guardian at heart, so he eliminates the threats, often before I’m even aware.”

“With his...bow tie? I thought he had a flaming sword.”

“No, that was packed up along with the rest of the Four Horsepersons’ weapons when the Apocalypse fizzled. The old dear is quite clever with alternative means of dispatching unwanted visitors, however. Let me see — how has he used that tie again? Oh yes… He tripped a demon so that they fell into a font of holy water and melted. He tied up two angels and roasted them in hellfire. He used it as a wick in a Molotov cocktail and exploded a pack of hellhounds. He dangled another angel over a black hole until they promised to leave us alone. And, on one of the few occasions that he used a clip-on, he dealt a demon a very nasty facial wound with the clasp. Let me tell you — it’s thrilling to watch. He’s never so sharp and fierce — even slightly demonic! — as when he’s defending those he loves.” Nanny sighed. Behind her little round sunglasses, her golden eyes unfocused slightly as she pondered this picture.

Heck blinked a few times. “Aziraphale — Dad —  _ my _ Angeldad — assassinates angels and demons.” She could barely imagine Aziraphale, plump, polite, sweater-vested and spatted, as a killer. Even as she thought that, however, she recognized that his adorably harmless persona was as much a strategy as Nanny’s Goth Mary Poppins look. He used his adversaries’ underestimation of him to his advantage. 

For a moment, Heck wondered what other weapons Aziraphale hid among his innocuous-looking clothes. Tiny bombs in his cufflinks? A garrote in his belt? Chloroform on his pocket square? In any event, her Angeldad was obviously much more badass than she had expected.

“Only if they try to break up his family.” Nanny turned her head toward Heck and smiled placidly. “Don’t worry. The two of us are perfectly safe.” 

“Wow. Okay. But he’s still an assassin! I’m just going to...leave that thought alone for now. Maybe take it to therapy or something. Where was I? Ahhhh, oh yeah. So Aziraphale said, ‘Weaponry,’ for why you wear what you wear. Anathema thought you had poor circulation, and Newt hadn’t even noticed. Madame Tracy said, ‘For traction over people,’ and then said it was like being a domme — “

“What?” cried Nanny, propping herself part of the way up on her elbows. “That’s inaccurate! — Or at least it’s not fully accurate,” she corrected herself punctiliously after a moment’s thought. “She, of all people, should know better!”

“—In the sense that you’re dressing for a part and telling people who’s in charge,” Heck finished, “which, by the way, made perfect sense to me.”

“Now that’s much more accurate.” With a nod, Nanny subsided.

“And Ms. Bothwala said — you’ll like this — that you either must have had a very strict Catholic upbringing or that you were raised by someone whose idea of fashion stopped at 1940.”

“Catholic! Me? Thanks! I hate it!”

“And Crowley, of course,” reported Heck with a long-suffering sigh and eyeball roll, “forced me to watch  _ Doctor Who.” _

“You know — it’s very interesting, child, how you always claim to be subjected to that show under duress, but you always have your nose up against the screen when Roger Delgado comes on.”

“Who’s Roger Delgado? I don’t even know who that is.” 

“Alternatively, Anthony Ainley.”

“Who? Anyway, there was some guy who was all in black, wearing gloves, and Crowley said, ‘It’s like him!’”

“Oh yes, just some guyyyy,” Nanny drawled with false nonchalance, suppressing little snorts of laughter. “The Master?” she offered.

“What the me kind of name is that, anyway?” Heck made a face.

“People have all sorts of weird names. What the you kind of name is Nanny? What the you kind of name is Heck? And how about those Puritan virtue names: Abstinence, Ashes, Desire, Fear, Obedience, Silence, and Submit, just to name a few? Ah yes…” Nanny shook her head. “I remember Fear, Obedience, and Silence — the Goodall triplets. They were a high-spirited crew, all identical, mischievous, and quite perversely playful. They enjoyed tricking strangers into believing that there was only one Goodall daughter who could bi- and/or trilocate. You would have liked them, child.”

“The Master,” muttered Heck. “Some of the staff used to call me that — the really old ones — back when we were all under the delusion that I was a boy. ‘Young Master Warlock’ — that’s what it sounds like, really. Of all the possible names you could name someone, that’s the stupidest. It’s right up there with calling your villain ‘young Missy McEvil’ or something. I mean — can’t you just see the parent going, ‘Now see here, missy. We don’t tolerate that kind of behavior in this house’?”

Nanny burst out laughing, then quickly composed herself. “Hmmm, then I probably shouldn’t tell you what the Master went by in her most recent incarnation.”

“Missy? Really? That’s ridiculous. Well, at least they didn’t go with ‘Mistress,’ I suppose. Then everyone would think she was doing kinky stuff on the side.”

“They’re all doing kinky stuff on the side,” Nanny pointed out with a wave.

“Well yeah. With a name like that, they should at least exploit the opportunity.” Heck stopped, realizing that they’d been chatting about her least favorite show for ten minutes. “You tempted me into a discussion about  _ Doctor Who, _ foul demon! Arrrrrrgh! Curse you! ” Heck sprang up into sitting and glared down her nose at Nanny.

Nanny pointed a finger at her, not stirring from her supine position.  _ “You  _ brought it up.  _ You _ went on a tangent about it. Don’t blame  _ me  _ for your not-so-secret fixation on the Master.” 

Heck turned her cheek, raising her neck haughtily. “I’m ignoring you. Anyway, Crowley said it was ‘like a safety...armor...sort of thing.’ And I suppose that makes psychological sense. So, anyway, yes — I exhausted all other possible sources, so can I have an answer to my question, please?”

Nanny chuckled. “I don’t know if you remember this, child, but you had this conversation with me almost fifteen years ago. Do you remember?”

“Ummmmmmm...nope. I remember some things from when I was five, but not everything.”


	3. Fifteen Years Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Heck was about five, she asked Nanny the same question: "Why do you wear all those clothes?" The discussion touched on clothes, gender, body parts, and the expectations of Thaddeus J. Dowling XVI for his offspring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Chapter 3 refers to transphobia and homophobia, as well as harassment and insulting terms, though they are not explicitly mentioned. The chapter also refers to dysphoria.

Nanny told Heck the story:

After unsuccessfully searching for Heck all over the house and grounds of the Dowling cottage, Nanny went into her own room. She hissed in dismay. The contents of her closet lay in heaps across the floor and furniture, interspersed with her shoes and boots. Her bureau drawer containing her gloves hung halfway off its track. It was as if a very localized tornado had attacked her entire wardrobe. Being a demon who regularly forgot that she had magic, Nanny rolled her eyes and sighed at the prospect of putting everything back into place.

Nanny, having not yet seen Heck, plucked one of many dresses from a chair back and draped it over her arm. She stopped when she saw what lay on the seat beneath. It was a pile of her underthings, including one stocking, two pairs of bloomers, a camisole, and an overbust corset, partially unlaced at the front. In fact, heaps of underthings lay strewn throughout her room.

She knew whose work this was. Some of the secondary kitchen staff (she refused to dignify them by name) had an ongoing speculation about ‘what she was.’ That was the phrase they used, like they weren’t even sure that she was a person. Guesses included a gay guy, a drag queen, a transsexual (a term that, though outmoded, was infinitely preferable to the other ‘tran-’ word she’d often received), and/or a generic pervert. 

Anyway, she assumed that the kitchen staff were responsible for this mess. It was probably the person she suspected of stealing her dirty laundry. Nanny had a personal moratorium on violence unless it was in self-defense. For a moment, though, she indulged in the sweet vision of incinerating the perpetrators’ clothes and then literally kicking them out of the house.

“Hah hah! You’re fat, and you’re ugly, and you like snakes, and your mum and dad don’t love you. No one wants to be friends with you!” came Heck’s voice, nasally and jeering, from the back of Nanny’s closet. Heck, not noticing Nanny, appeared. She was dressed up in one of Nanny’s usual outfits. She even had a credible imitation of Nanny’s makeup on (though the dark red lipstick veered noticeably outside the lines).

As Heck marched over to Nanny’s mirror, she changed back to her usual voice, and Nanny realized that she was acting out both sides of a conversation. Heck planted her feet wide, put her arms akimbo, then stepped wrong, nearly falling out of Nanny’s shoes. She caught herself and closed her face down in a very unchildlike expression of contempt. “Yeah, well, you’re mean and nasty, and I don’t even want to be your friend. Besides, I’m a witch, and I have magic powers.”

Heck modulated her voice into that of the kid teasing her: “Liar! You’re not a witch.”

And so it went as Nanny listened in: “Yes, I am so a witch.”

“Are you going to put a spell on me?”

“Yeah!”

“Turn me into a snake?”

“No! Snakes are nice. You’re not nice.”

“A newt? A frog? A bat?”

“No, they’re all nice too. I’m just gonna...just gonna...” Heck paused.

Nanny held her breath, leaning forward eagerly. What torments might her hellspawn devise for this imaginary sadist? She had, of course, emphasized to Heck that other people were fit only for crushing beneath her heels. However, she rather hoped that Heck’s creativity would give her a flair for cruelty.

“I’m gonna make everyone see how mean you are,” declared Heck, “and then all your friends are gonna go away!” She chanted the magic words:  _ “Abracadabra, fuck off forever!” _

Nanny bit back a sigh. Her child always did have a distressing tendency toward psychological insight, combined with a disturbing capacity for empathy. Perhaps the tormentors’ taste of their own medicine was the most fitting — and even ultimately the most painful — punishment for the crime, but it smacked uncomfortably of kindness. Nanny wrinkled her nose. —Or even, she thought with a shudder,  _ goodness. _

“Little hellspawn!” she sang out. “I see you dismantling my closet.”

Heck turned around. “Um, yeah,” she said, in the muted, guilty voice that Nanny had tried so long to tutor her out of. She didn’t even whip up a blatant falsehood as an excuse. “I’m playing witches, so I needed to dress up as one.”

“Are the other children at school bothering you again?”

Heck shrugged. “No. But I have to be ready if they do.”

Nanny sighed, kneeling at Heck’s level. “Oh, child… Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” said Heck. She almost tripped out of Nanny’s shoes again, so she pulled them off, plunking her little butt down on the rug. “Nanny, why do you wear so many clothes?”

“Well, I certainly don’t wear them all at once!” Nanny sat down with her back against the footboard of her bed, legs crossed at the ankle.

“No, but you wear all these things with all these hooks and pieces, and you never wear short sleeves, and you always wear gloves, even when it’s not cold. Why do you wear all those clothes?”

Clasping her hands in her lap, Nanny thought for a minute of how to best phrase her answer so that her hellspawn would understand. “Hmm...Well, I wear them because I like them. They make me feel like myself: powerful, beautiful, and...comfortable.”

“What’s this? It looks uncomfortable.” Heck pointed to a nearby corset.

“That’s a corset.”

“What’s it for?”

“It goes around my waist,” said Nanny, miming with horizontal, belt-like motions, “and then up over my breasts.” She moved her hands in curves from the underside to the tops of her breasts. “It changes my shape a bit and also supports my breasts. It does what your mum’s bras do and then some.”

Heck’s eyes widened with the curious awe of someone seeing fireworks for the first time. “Can I wear one? Like you?”

“A corset or a bra?”

“Corset. I don’t have enough breasts yet.”

Not for the first time, Nanny wondered what her hellspawn was thinking in terms of gender. She decided to probe some more. “Oh? You’re going to have breasts when you grow up?”

“Maybe,” said Heck nonchalantly. “I mean — if I want ‘em. I don’t know what I want.”

“So...what are you thinking about? I mean, in terms of what you want?”

“I dunno,” said Heck. She put her head to one side, nearly touching her shoulder with her cheek, as she thought. “I like peeing standing up. Then I don’t have to touch the toilet.”

“Yes, that’s certainly convenient.” Nanny smiled, but suppressed a laugh, for she didn’t want her child to think that she was being laughed at.

“Breasts are nice too.” Heck brought her head to vertical again, perking up. “Then I can wear one of these and be like you!”

“You can wear one of those if you want to, no matter what kind of body you have,” Nanny told her softly and definitely. 

“Oh, okay. I just…” Heck drooped a little bit. “Sometimes...I don’t want to be a boy.”

“Awwww, child. Come here,” said Nanny. Heck jumped into her lap. Nanny held her very close.

“My dad wants one,” continued Heck in a small voice. “But sometimes I don’t want to be one."

Heck’s comment gave Nanny all the information she needed. Whatever her hellspawn figured out about herself, the child would never, ever be the son of Thaddeus J. Dowling XVI. “I know your dad wants a boy,” she whispered, bending over Heck and laying her cheek on top of Heck’s head. “And I know you feel sad because maybe it feels like he doesn’t want you. And I know you want him to love you, and it’s really very hard when he doesn’t love you in the way that you want.”

“Yeah,” said Heck. She wasn’t crying — a sure sign of deep distress — but she was subdued, thinking about things she didn’t want to.

Nanny brought her head away from Heck’s so she could look down at her hellspawn. “But do you know who  _ does  _ wants you, just the way you are, whoever you are, whether you’re your father’s son or your mother’s daughter or perhaps not even your parents’ child, but someone else entirely?”

“You ‘n’ Francis.” Heck’s upturned face immediately brightened into a smile.

Nanny hugged her hellspawn tighter. “Yes! Me and Francis. Whoever your parents are, whatever you want to wear, whatever kind of body you choose to have, Francis and I always want you, just as you are.”


	4. In That Stillness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened to the perv who was stealing Nanny's underthings? What's Nanny's whole theory on the clothes she wears? How do intimidation and relaxation go hand in hand? And what's [according to Nanny] the main difference between her and Crowley?

Back in the present, Heck was crying. “Awwww, wow. That’s like my entire childhood in one story. But I don’t remember that at all.”

“Oh dear!” Nanny lunged forward, sitting up part of the way, like she had the power to stop Heck’s tears. “I’m sorry that I made you cry.” She gave Heck her handkerchief. “So much for that being an amusing little anecdote.”

“No no, don’t apologize. It was amusing...until it wasn’t. Did they really say those things in the kitchen? Never mind. Of course they did.” Heck blew her nose until she felt better. “Did you ever catch the creeps who were sniffing your clothes, though?”

“I did. He abruptly resigned.” Nanny lowered her eyelids with a deeply personal satisfaction that indicated that she herself was behind the resignation. “He then lost four subsequent job opportunities because I called the potential employers and warned about him.”

“Okay, maybe the gods do exist!” said Heck, though she knew that they (all of them) did. “There is justice in the world after all!” She gave a clap.

Nanny swiveled her head toward Heck. Her thin red mouth stretched into a wide vindictive smile. “That wasn’t the gods, child. That was me.”

Tall and strong and forbidding, Heck’s Hellmom looked like an assassin then, one with the merciless golden eyes of an inhuman predator. Heck glanced away. “Right...so...okay, back to the original topic. I can understand about feeling powerful and beautiful because that’s basically what everyone else said...also because...um...you are. Not that I’m like lusting after you — “

Nanny rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “Admiration for beauty isn’t always about lust or envy. Sometimes it’s merely — “ She cocked her head, considering her words. “—The appreciation of excellence.”

“Oooh, I like that. Where’s that from?”

“I made it up.”

“You’re good.”

“Good? I’ll thank you not to insult me like that, child.”

“I meant good with words, you doofus! Anyway… So I get the power and the beauty, but I don’t get the comfort at all. How can you be comfortable in all of that?” Heck shook her hands loosely at Nanny’s clothes. “You have your corset doing unnatural things to your ribcage. And your blouses are always very — you know — “

“Structured?”

“Yeah, that. They have lots of those pleaty things — “

“Darts.”

“And they fit really exactly, so you can’t like reach your arms straight up over your head. And the skirts — I have to admit that I never got the skirts. You can’t really walk that fast if they’re that long and that narrow. I know I’m obviously missing something, but to me it looks like you’re being...squished, reined in, controlled.”

Nanny paused. Her corset pulled her flesh in and sent her breasts up so that they no longer weighed on her chest. She didn’t lace it very closely, but she always felt that constant wrap of pressure, that encouragement to stay just like this. The deep darts in her blouse’s bodice and its narrow arm holes forgave only a position with neutral torso and hanging arms. When she moved in any direction, the seams and the limits of her blouse drew against her skin, beckoning her back into stillness. Even with the pleats hidden in the back of her skirt, her long stride hitched up against the boundary of her skirt with every step. She moved best when she placed one foot exactly in front of each other, which, she knew, set her hips swinging like a clapper confined in a narrow bell. “Mmmmm…” she said with a happy exhalation. “Yes, I am.”

“You are? Then...how is that comfortable?”

“Because then...I can...relax!” Closing her eyes, Nanny stretched out the word as long as she was, from the crown of her head, down the curve of her arching spine, her side-by-side legs, and her flexing feet.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m not getting.” Heck shook her head from side to side. “Maybe I’m not femme enough or something, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Hmmm…” Opening her eyes and regarding the ceiling fan, Nanny tapped her chin as she thought. “How should I phrase this? One time Aziraphale and I — as Crowley — were talking about clothes. He basically asked me why he had to put such work into looking good when I did it without any thought or effort. Of course, I said I didn’t know, but it wasn’t like it was thoughtless or effortless. It was more like...you know…” With quick, wheeling hand gestures and writhing eyebrows, Nanny was now imitating Crowley. “—One of those things that starts out small and random, then turns into something nice, and then you’re like,  _ Oh yeah, I totally meant to do that.” _

“A quintessential Crowley comparison.” Heck laughed.

“An apt one too. When I’m him, no, I don’t have a consciously calculated style. I have an aesthetic that I’ve unintentionally developed over time.”

“Okay, so I think I can see where this is going,” said Heck with a half smile and a shrewd, understanding nod. “In contrast to Crowley,  _ you _ — meaning Nanny — plan every single thing you wear.”

“Yes indeed. Every piece is part of a very particular presentation and a deliberate distinction,” Nanny said, elongating each word by pronouncing every single syllable, “all to a single end: I intimidate people to make myself above scrutiny and judgment.”

“You don’t have to play cool?” guessed Heck, thinking of Crowley’s (self-mocking but also true) desire to look badass.

“Exactly!” Nanny enunciated so that the whole word seemed sharper. “I exempt myself from the game, which means I exempt myself from all the social pressure and related expectations, and then I can just...relax.” Again she let herself go against the bed — as far as her corset and her blouse and her pencil skirt would permit her to go — and closed her eyes.

“Okay, emotionally, maybe,” said Heck, “but physically? Maybe I’m missing something again, but you don’t seem  _ physically  _ comfortable to me. You’re always like...very alert, like you’re watching out for something. There’s this tension…”

Opening one eye, Nanny raised an eyebrow as she turned her head to Heck. “If you don’t think I’m physically comfortable, then give me an example of someone who you think is.”

“Crowley!” said Heck instantly with a happy little butt dance on the bed. “He has no self-consciousness. He makes whatever faces he wants; he lolls around however he wants. He’s like very loose.”

“He is certainly physically loose and expressive in a way that I am not,” Nanny allowed with a judicious nod. “He also has his own posture and body language of physical comfort...as I have mine. Surely you’ve noticed how he’s always seething with motion, whether facial expressions or fidgets or changing position? It’s like an uncontrollable energy coursing through him and burning off in those movements.” For a moment, she imitated his twitchy, bouncy body language, and she seemed as variable as a wind-blown flame.

“Mmmm, yeah.” Heck tilted her head all the way to the side, laying her left ear against her shoulder, thinking, just as she had so long ago. “Like he needs to get it out somehow, and the only way to get it out is to make faces or to wiggle.”

“When I am me, I have the chance to redirect that energy and focus it inward.” Sitting up, Nanny folded her arms at the elbows as she sent her hands gliding back toward her heart. “I feel much less of a need to move as he does because I’ve converted that excess energy into mental work.”

“Oh yeah!” Heck sat up. “Putting all your thoughts into crystal boxes.” That was how Nanny pictured her mind: as row upon neat row of clean, well-dusted shelves, filled with cut-glass boxes, each with a handwritten calligraphic label denoting the thought within. Heck had never asked how Crowley or Mala pictured the same mind when they were ascendant, but she was sure that their representations would neither be so regimented nor so beautiful.

“Right! So, while I may be constrained physically, I like that feeling.” Wrapping her arms around herself, Nanny indulged in a delicious shiver. “It brings me a stillness, a tranquility, that I desperately need for balance. In that stillness, I can relax.” For the third time, she invoked that ultimate goal and then embodied it. Dropping the force from her muscles and bones, she permitted the close binding of everything she wore to take her weight.

Righting her head, Heck put one eyebrow up and the other down as she analyzed. “So it’s like your clothes are doing work for you, so then you’re free not to worry about doing all that work yourself?”

“Yessssss!” said Nanny, turning as quickly as a snake toward Heck. Heck couldn’t tell if she was hissing because she was purposely drawing out the word or because she just did that when she was particularly emotional. “Sssssee?” Okay, so she was a little wound up. “You do undersssstand! Ssssmart hellsssspawn.” She beamed.

“Okay. One more question, though. Seriously...how do you garden in a corset and a pencil skirt?”


	5. Daring the Demon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heck challenges Nanny to run and jump in her current attire. Nanny tells the story of her "You have got to be kidding me!" shoes. Aziraphale provides an [extended] conjugal distraction. Nanny gives Heck a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Hot DAMN. She can do THAT? Of course she can. She's Nanny heckin' Ashtoreth, man!!

“It’s all thanks to the miraculous human inventions of stretchy fabric and kick pleats!” Nanny did jazz hands, only with less flailing and more elegance.

“What are kick pleats?”

“They’re inverted pleats sewn into narrow skirts to allow greater freedom of movement.”

“But how do you even run and jump?” Heck cried. “I’ve seen you squatting and crawling on your hands and knees, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you run or jump.”

Nanny glided into a standing position by the bed. “I’ve never had to. If I need to be somewhere promptly, I have either the Bentley or the air transport.” In illustration, she manifested her wings out of Uncertainty Space and into space/time. They flashed behind her for a moment — translucent grey, covered with feathers as sharp as scales — and then disappeared.

Heck skipped around to Nanny’s side of the bed and said in a teasing singsong, “Hah! Is that an admission that you caaaaaan’t, at least not in those clothes?”

There was a pace or two between Heck and Nanny, but Nanny appeared in front of Heck so quickly that she seemed to have teleported. “Did you just...challenge me, child?” Heck jumped, though Nanny spoke with laughter in her voice. Demons never could resist dares.

Heck put her hands on her hips. “Yeah! I challenge you to run and jump, wearing what you’re wearing now, without any magical cheating to make your clothes stretch or something.”

“We should go outside. Let me get my shoes on.” With a magical snap of her fingers, Nanny summoned to hand a pair of pumps that Heck hadn’t seen her wear before. Usually Nanny’s heels were squarish and sensible, no taller than six centimeters. But these pumps had narrow heels that were at least ten centimeters high.

“You have got to be kidding me,” said Heck as Nanny sat on the bed and tied her shoes. “Where did you get those?”

“Vicious & Delicious. It’s in the city. Let’s go in the back yard,” suggested Nanny.

“Great, now I’m about eye level with your waist,” Heck muttered, following her. “Are those shoes or murder weapons? You could stab someone with those spikes.”

“Anything is a murder weapon if you’re creative enough. Ask Aziraphale!”

“What’s that?” Aziraphale moseyed into the kitchen where Heck and Nanny stood. “Who needs to weaponize what now? Oh...dear...me.” Either he had never seen his ineffable spouse wear shoes that like before either, or the sight always left him opening and shutting his mouth speechlessly, even as his scalp turned red enough to be seen through his fluffy yellow-white hair.

“Mom’s taking weaponized femininity to new heights!” Heck informed him.

“Literally!” said Nanny. “At least two meters.”

“Whaa,” replied Aziraphale. Even though he had lost the power of speech, Heck knew that he was thrilled. He tended to levitate a little bit when he was happy, and his wingtip shoes had just left the ground.

“Why thank you, angel!” exclaimed Nanny. She scooped him up into her arms. They kissed so long that Heck wondered why they weren’t passing out. Then she remembered that angels and demons did not technically need to breathe. She quietly excused herself out the back door, thinking that it was always a little embarrassing when your Hellmom and your Angeldad were so passionately all over each other like that.

Several minutes later, Nanny exited the house, reapplying her lipstick (which had not been smudged in the slightest). She moved briskly to where Heck stood. “Pardon the ineffable conjugal distraction. Ready?”

“I still don’t know how you’re going to do this.”

“Go down to the other end of the lawn,” Nanny directed. Heck did so, walking backward, watching her for an indication. Once Heck was perhaps fifteen meters away, Nanny called, “Good! Stop! Now pay attention. This is a once-in-a-lifetime demonstration — understand? And you do  _ not  _ get to brag to your friends about how your Hellmom is an acrobat.”

“Why not?” Heck yelled back. “It would just add to your coolness quotient.”

“Because I told you not to, so you won’t.” Even at this distance, Heck detected Nanny’s glare.

“Yes ma’am!” Heck saluted. “Seriously...don’t worry. I won’t. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Thank you. Count down for me?”

“Ready, set, go!”

Nanny ran toward Heck. Though her stride was clipped by her skirt, her long limbs still propelled her every stride with power. Somehow, even in her super high heels, she connected solidly with the ground at each step. Yet she still moved weightlessly, flowing, slithering, hurtling toward Heck as inexorably as a disaster. 

When she had covered two thirds of the distance between her and Heck, Nanny jumped. There was effort in her launch, of course, but also a floating grace. She curled her spine as much as she could, being corseted, and bent her knees as much as she could, being hobble-skirted. At the apex of her leap, she seemed to hang for a moment, suspended in her own silent sphere of calm.

She rolled into a double flip. Sinuous and strong, energetic and exact, she spun forward in a motion that epitomized everything she was. She unfolded with the languid ease of someone shifting slowly from a dream.

Bending her knees a bit, Nanny prepared for impact. Then she landed just meters from Heck, smack and square on her feet. She thrust her right leg forward for best balance, but didn’t wobble otherwise. Sucking in a breath, she flashed an exhilarated smile in Heck’s direction.

Nanny approached Heck. Her shoulders rose and fell greatly as she caught her breath. “Challenge,” she said to Heck coolly, striking a contrapposto pose with her hand on her left hip, “accepted, executed, and  _ devastated.” _

“Hot  _ damn!” _ Heck agreed, gaping. She was learning all sorts of new things about her Hellmom and her Angeldad today. It was extremely educational.

“Thank you very much.” Nanny acknowledged her with a nod.

“How did you do that?”

With a smirk both proud and serene, Nanny told Heck the secret: “It was a combination of demonic flexibility, raw physical power, and, of course, a precisely calibrated cultivation of balanced inner stillness.”


End file.
